Pages

Monday, October 31, 2011

I just updated my post on the best coffee in Taipei to include Rufous, on Fuxing S. Road just north of Xinhai. I was tipped off by another expat that this place makes some great stuff.

I'm pretty serious about my coffee and have a few more places I've found that I'd like to try and possibly add to this list - I need to see if Black Bean still exists as well as a place I went to in Dapinglin once, years ago. I'll keep everyone posted!

Friday, October 28, 2011

This editorial on public transit in Taiwan is something I really agree with. It's quite timely for me, having just returned from the USA, to talk briefly about public transit in Taipei. Taishun Street has a number of articulate posts on the topic, so take a look over there if you want another pro-public-transit perspective.

When we lived in the Washington, DC area, and when we returned in our early Taiwan years to DC to visit friends and some of my extended family, we relied heavily on public transit there. This trip was different: now almost all of our friends own cars and since we are mainly in town to see them, they're usually kind enough to give us rides - and when we go "sightseeing" (more like revisiting old favorite places, seeing new monuments) we no longer take Metro or Metrobus: one person drives - usually our friend M who is a bold city driver and has great luck with street parking - and we all pile in.

I used to think that public transit in DC was great - after all it's widely believed to be the best public transit system in the USA. I would contest that: it beats out the L, the T, BART and whatever Philadelphia has. Sure, unlike New York it's air-conditioned, trains are generally clean and it doesn't smell like urine and homeless people. That said, it's not nearly as extensive as it needs to be (only New York can claim that mantle, of all American transit systems), the waiting time for trains is really unacceptable, especially on the outer ends of the lines that double up in the city, the stations are dark and creepy (one book calls them "attractive and well-lit". I want to know what that guy is smoking!) and the buses are unreliable and inconvenient to use on the outskirts of the Metro area.

In Taipei we regularly use public transit to get to trailheads for hiking or go on day trips. You can go far on the MRT, bus network and buses leaving Taipei, although once you leave the area around Taipei City, you may have to fill in the gaps with taxis - fortunately, taxis are cheap. The DC equivalent would be using public transit to take day trips to Baltimore, Ocean City, Annapolis or Richmond, hike the Billy Goat Trail, go down to Shenandoah or up to Harper's Ferry. Well, you can't do any of those things. Technically you can take a bus to Baltimore or Richmond but once there you can't really go anywhere, and you can take a train to Harper's Ferry but due to departure/arrival times, you can't do it in a day trip. You're looking at at least a full day and two nights.

So yeah, now that I live in Taipei, I've long since stopped thinking that public transit in DC is great, or even good. In fact, now I think it kind of sucks. It has its defenders, but I say: its defenders haven't been to Taipei where the stations are clean and bright, the escalators always work, there are restrooms (and they're generally quite good!), trains come an average of every five minutes and signs will tell you down to five seconds when the next one is coming. Come to Taipei, take a few day trips or flit around the city on public transit, and then go back to DC and tell me if it's any good. You can throw me an e-mail from your bus stop after your bus arrives 20 minutes late if at all, or while you're waiting 14 minutes for a train, or the Red Line is on fire (again), or you're huffing and puffing up a long, out-of-service escalator.

Anyway, back to Taiwan. Taipei has excellent public transit - and it'll be even better once the MRT reaches its planned network size, but let's be honest: the rest of the country doesn't. From what I hear, it used to: buses would travel far more extensive networks and depart more often and you could get to a lot of places that you now need a car to reach. Only Kaohsiung and the High Speed Rail have been improvements (my only complaints about the HSR is that it doesn't go down to Kending and that the stations are too far from city centers. Otherwise, I love it and use it often for work: of course, since it's mostly for work I don't have to pay for it).

I agree with 鄧志忠's editorial in this case: Taipei has done an excellent job of building a fantastic MRT from scratch in an astoundingly short time, but the rest of Taiwan is really lacking good public transit - if anything, it's gotten worse.This is a huge problem: Taiwan shouldn't be going in the direction of postwar America, where suburbs created a greater need for cars (encouraged, of course, by auto manufacturers and oil companies), public transit in many urban centers was dismantled or never built at all, and when it was built it wasn't nearly extensive enough. Only New York, which was ahead of the curve, managed to build something useful - because it did so mostly pre-war. If it had waited to start building subways, it too would be woefully inadequate. So what did Americans do? They all bought cars, they spewed and continue to spew pollution into the atmosphere, and they've all convinced themselves that they need, need, need their Earth-killing, congestion-inducing cars - so when public transit is introduced, nobody takes it ("but I need my car! Waaaaah!"). Do we really want that in Taiwan? I don't think so, but that's the direction we're headed in. Convince people that they need cars and they'll, well, they'll need cars. Show people how great life can be if a public transit network is extensive enough to suit their needs, and they'll take public transit.

Instead of building more highways - although that needs to be done to some degree, as well - there should be more investment in buses on rural routes, especially mountain routes where people unused to mountain driving would probably be better off not nervously swinging around high-altitude switchbacks for hours on end. Taichung really, truly needs a public transit system that doesn't suck: a lot of people say that Taichung is a fine place to live. Some go so far as to say that it's the best city to settle in for expats. I disagree: it will never be good enough without public transit. If you need to buy a scooter to get around, it's not ideal. This is one way in which I believe Taipei is really the better place to live, even if the weather sucks and I disagree with its political bent. Build an MRT and I'll consider Taichung as a place worth living in.

Because, really, public transit is good for everyone: it relieves road congestion and chaos for those who must or should drive (couriers, salespeople who make several daily client calls, people giving elderly relatives a ride etc.), it's more environmentally friendly, it reduces smog and pollution and it encourages more walking and reduces isolation. It's also good for people who: hate driving; who can drive but hate city, open highway and mountain driving (me); are legally blind or otherwise can't drive (a friend of mine as well as a friend of my mother's fall into this category); the elderly who are too infirm or blind to drive; and those who are simply bad drivers. Having to drive to get anywhere is extremely limiting for those people.

So, in the end, we want to be going in the opposite direction of the USA. Taiwan should be encouraging public transit, not opposing it and definitely not shrinking it - which is a real concern, as bus routes are, in fact, shrinking island-wide. Taichung, Hualien, Taidong, Taoyuan, Yilan, Luodong and Hsinchu all need improved networks (even if it's just buses - though Taichung is big enough to warrant an actual MRT). We need to encourage the public to use public transit, reminding them that no, you don't need a car. Of course, first, we need to build networks extensive enough to serve people's needs so they're not actually right when they say they need a car.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I've taken long vacations before - up to six weeks - but this is the first time I've spent more than two months (nine weeks) away since I moved to Taipei five years ago. On all of these trips, but this one more than most, the taxi ride back to our apartment from Taipei Main (we could take the MRT but we usually don't when we have lots of bags) has been a mostly familiar but also slightly disorienting experience.

I always seem to forget while I'm away that the architecture of Taipei takes some getting used to. I love this city and in many ways think it's beautiful (as one friend put it, "it has a patina"), but that is not an immediate reaction: that's a view cultivated over time, as the aesthetics of Taipei percolate and settle in my brain like so much dark coffee. Let's face it: while plenty of buildings in Taipei have distinct and compelling facades - from the turn-of-the-century shophouses to the whalebone-ribbed and color-tiled mid-century mid-rises - many are not so visually arresting. I'm talking concrete or white tile buildings, buildings that, rather than having a lovely "patina", really just could use a good scrubbing, featureless buildings with backlit neon signs and chock-a-block street-level shops along mangled sidewalks.

It's when these monstrosities settle in your brain and you stop looking at them that you adjust to Taipei and see other things - a charming black-and-white church on Chang-an Road or the '60s funktacular post office jutting into view along the highway to Linkou, views down busy roads on the brown line MRT, street food vendors cooking up all manner of greasy treats, a Japanese era corner house-turned-coffeeshop on Zhongshan Road, inviting restaurants, little parks, derelict Japanese wooden houses and the old shophouse outlines of renovated buildings still in use.

That's not what I see when I come back to Taipei after a long trip, though. After banishing the concrete monstrosities to the back of my consciousness, they hurtle back into full view after time away. They whiz by, advertising chain boutiques I don't shop in, scooter repair, 7-11, plumbing and electrician services, restaurants. Above float darkened, barred windows stamped with hideous conformity into dark gray hulks. I'll say it: the taxi ride back was ugly, like U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you UGLY ugly. After renting a garden apartment in a charming rowhouse in Istanbul for a month, the six flights (six flights!) of cement stairs and peeling paint back to our apartment in Jingmei were ugly. I'd forgotten how ugly the kitchen is, and the view from it has never spectacular (although I've grown quite fond of the neon cross from the nearby church that glows red at night. You don't have to be Christian to appreciate Christian camp).

I feel it's been made worse this time due to the length of time we've been gone, the extended period of time we spent in Istanbul, which is generally more attractive, and the fact that living in Istanbul even for a short period and taking a class there has changed me and my perception of the world more deeply than one of our usual trips would.

Oh well. This only reinforces my desire to move into a newer, nicer apartment, and I'll stop actively noticing the horrible architecture soon. All of the things that are attractive about Taipei will come back into focus in time. Tonight I'll probably seek out one of my favorite haunts in Gongguan, if I'm not too jet-lagged, pour myself a classy beer and look out on the pretty-ish lanes around Wenzhou Street, and it'll come back.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

I haven’t posted a lot of recipes or book
reviews recently – OK, until about a week ago I hadn’t posted anything much at
all. Sooner or later I’ll get around to a double review of Jan Wong’s Red China Blues and Jan Wong’s China. For now,
recipes!

I recently made a dish, based off of thisrecipe, for my in-laws on a chilly Maine day, and it came out extremely well
(if quite different from the original). I thought I’d post it here because it
can definitely be made in Taiwan, and is perfect for those cold, damp, “oh yeah
no central heating in a cement building” Taipei winter days.

Beef and Squash Stew with Beer and Mustard

Ingredients:

4-5 cups cubed butternut squash – you can
also use pumpkin, other kinds of squash, or if you are willing to alter the
recipe even more, lentils

1 jar of whatever mustard you like – but
avoid the bright yellow French’s stuff – in this recipe you can really taste
the difference with expensive mustard

2 soft breadsticks (not the hard kind but
the kind you can slice and cut) – you could also use several cups of croutons

Olive oil, water, optional paprika

A few chunks of butter

Large casserole, crock pot or pot, pastry
brush

Method:

If baking, preheat oven to 350. Recipe can be baked, crock-potted or cooked
on the stove

Rub down chunks of stew beef with salt,
pepper and paprika if desired, sauté in olive oil on medium until they start to
brown. About halfway through the browning process add the garlic to nicely
roast it. Remove from heat and set aside.

Combine all chopped/chunked vegetables and
apple in crock pot, large deep pot or large casserole. Leave out the red peppers and peas or
anything that cooks relatively quickly.

Pour beer into mixture – it shouldn’t come
quite to the top but should come near the top.

Bake on 350 for about 1.5 hours – or you
could bake it longer at 320. Every 15-20 minutes, use a wooden spoon to stir up
the mixture to make sure the stuff on top doesn’t dry out and burn.

Add bell pepper and peas. By now, the
butternut squash and apple should have dissolved into the beer and formed a
soupy mixture. Add sifted flour and mix
in until suitably thickened. Add additional salt and pepper to taste.

Slice breadsticks down the center to reduce
thickness. Use pastry brush to coat completely in mustard, or cover croutons in
mustard if you are using those.

Press breadsticks into top of stew about halfway, so they form a top “crust”,
or cover in croutons. Return to stove and bake for 15 more minutes, reducing
heat to 320 if baking at 350. If cooking on stove or crockpot, take it out,
pour into casserole, stick in breadsticks and warm in stove on 350 for 15
minutes. You can also toast the mustard-covered breadsticks and add them to the
serving dish if you don’t wish to bake.

Serve in soup bowls, or over rice on
plates. Each guest gets a whole or half breadstick – serves about 8, or 4 with
leftovers.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

As an expat in Asia, I have to deal with it almost daily - from those little social niceties that allow people to preserve their status, pride or dignity all the way to outright lying, doing anything to avoid admitting fault and back again to roundabout, indirect turns of phrase that ultimately mean nothing but preserve a semblance of social harmony.

Two events have caused me to think about face in more depth and pointedly explore how I feel about it and my relationship to it. After all, I have a sense of face, too - made all the stronger from having lived in countries where it is a strong component of national culture.

The first was this incident in Sanliurfa (a historic city in southeast Turkey). Yes, face exists in Turkey as it does in Taiwan, although within its own cultural paradigm. You can read the actual story through that link.

The second is something I'll speak about more vaguely, as it's currently unfolding: events at work. Basically, a series of screw-ups, poorly timed decisions, manufactured problems and outright incompetence have caused both of us to be dissatisfied. He's quitting now - I have a few things to finish up before I throw in the towel but rest assured I won't be there much longer, either (and before anyone leaves a comment to warn me that I shouldn't say so openly online, don't worry. I've stopped caring. I could figure things out if my workplace got ahold of this post. This is a bridge I don't mind torching - to quote some song lyrics, we don't need no water, let the mother****er burn). Their actions have generally not caused me to lose face - and when I do mess up (and I do, everyone does) I own up to it and apologize. I expect my basic dignity to remain intact and demand respect, but I won't use face for that other twisted purpose of covering up my shortcomings or refusing to acknowledge fault. They have, however, caused my husband to lose, if not face, then dignity, and he is absolutely right to reclaim that and leave. They've also got a bad - but very East Asian - habit of doing anything and everything to maintain their own face, even if it's to the detriment of someone else's.

What I've realized from this is that there are two types of face: the "it doesn't affect anyone else to preserve my dignity" face, which includes "social harmony" face, and the other, more insidious "this is a zero-sum game" face in which saving your own skin requires skinning someone else alive.

The first one doesn't bother me as much as it used to, depending on the situation. Culturally speaking, I'm predisposed to being direct, saying something is wrong when it is, and holding people accountable. Where I come from - New York, which I find to be a region of plainspoken people - the frankness of what someone says isn't meant to be taken personally, and isn't expected to do so. You messed up, say you're sorry, do your best to fix it, and OK. We can all move on. Nobody's going to harp on it forever, because you owned it. When I first moved to Asia, I was of the mindset of: well, you screwed up. Don't try to pussyfoot around it, and don't try to glaze over it with elliptical speech. Just apologize and do your best to make amends, and we can move on. I respected people who rose to this standard much more, and I generally don't hold grudges (with a few exceptions, but even those are passive grudges rather than active ones. I don't have the energy to actively hate someone for long periods of time). The mistake is no biggie - we all make them - but the vague, glassy speech of someone trying to save face (mistakes were made...happenstances were happened...you know...it's very difficult to...things...stuff...oh, ah...) is something I find deeply irritating. I didn't really respect it, and still don't.

What has changed is that now I understand it. I'm used to it, and I've been known to play the game to allow someone else to save a bit of face. I've even been known to do this at work by smiling and nodding through sheer idiocy, because it behooves me to allow the person to save face for now.

Other times, I really can't condone it: what happened in Sanliurfa was this kind of face-saving: oh no, they weren't trying to cheat you, it was a language misunderstanding. Oh no, they thought it was a tip. No, of course they didn't try to cheat you, it's just a culture gap - with the expectation that the other person will just play along. As Brendan noted in his post, the money wasn't important. Five lira really is nothing to us in the vast reaches of time. It was that we weren't interested in saving the face of someone who just tried to cheat us.

But the social harmony aspect of saving face is something I'm fine with, most of the time. You know, a newbie on the job screws up royally, and everyone glosses over it because she's new, trying hard, and she'll get better (and usually, she does). I have no problem with that. If it means not responding to every idiotic thing a person says, no matter how crazy right wing (or left wing) or conspiracy theorist it is, because you have to deal with that person in the future and it's best for you if you just let those things go...well, OK.

Of course, if there's a massive underlying problem, like, I don't know, an office that consistently makes huge mistakes, manufactures problems and acts to solve them with all the efficacy of a car whose wheels are spinning in the mud - and everyone's trying to pretend that it's all fine and everyone is doing an outstanding job and we should all clap politely - then no.

Then there's face as a zero-sum game. The kind where there are two people or groups involved, and one of them is either fully or nominally at fault, but desperate to do anything possible to save face even at the expense of the other. This is what started to happen in Sanliurfa before we walked away: what started as a stupid game to save the faces of two guys trying to cheat us turned into a zero-sum catfight. When we refused to smile and nod politely at the idea that this was just a language misunderstanding it turned into "don't be rude!". By not playing along, the only choice left to the cafe owners and the English speaking customer who came over to help us was to save their face by trying to take away ours by accusing Brendan of being "rude". Those of you who know Brendan know that basically the last thing he could ever be called is "rude"!

It's happened at work, as well - but I won't go into too much detail.

I don't feel that it's the norm in foreigner-Taiwanese interactions that it'll always be a "my face over yours, foreigner!" situation, although it does happen. I do feel that this is exactly what happened in Sanliurfa - the English-speaking customer, being Turkish, was more interested in saving the face of the also-Turkish cafe owners than in admitting the truth, right up to the point of causing (or attempting to cause) us foreigners to lose face as a preferable outcome to shaming the cafe owners.

I have felt at work that, while it was very rare (I can only think of one instance) in which they tried to make me lose face personally, that at times I felt that my face, as a foreigner, was not as important as the face of a local. I remember a time before we left for Turkey that my company made the same mistake three times in one month, a mistake that caused me to look like a bit of a dunderhead in front of clients. I told them so, even using the phrase "these mistakes have caused me to lose face in front of clients", and felt that the reaction was more than a bit apathetic, as in yeah, we'll try not to screw up again, but we don't really care if you personally look bad in front of clients because of mistakes we made. We care more if the company looks bad.

That's work, though, and I do not feel that these examples can stretch to encompass all Taiwanese people. It does happen, but I'm not going to point my finger at the entire society (something I feel happens far too often on expat blogs around the world).

So, in the end, it's a complex topic. Sometimes I play the game - and I admit to having my own sense of face - sometimes I won't even pick up the dice. Sometimes I understand it, rarely do I respect it. Sometimes I just can't condone it. Sometimes it has a relevant place in social interaction and sometimes it's a big ol' shield of lies and elliptical speech meant to preserve some idiot's fragile sense of status, even when he doesn't deserve it.

As many of you know, I recently took (and
survived) the Cambridge CELTA course - I took it despite having taught for over
five years because I no longer wished to be a very good “corporate trainer”
(translation: teacher in a suit) who happened to not be certified. I wanted to
be a fantastic teacher with a real qualification. I chose CELTA because it was the only
certification program that I felt I would really learn from after five years of
teaching.

And I did – I felt that besides learning some new ideas and techniques for good
teaching, that teaching 8 lessons and being critically assessed on all of them
was extremely good for me. I went into the course thinking that timing and
half-assed lesson planning were my problems, but learned that it’s in fact timing
and Teacher Talking Time that I need to work on. Simply having a qualified
person assess my teaching and give me action points was an immensely helpful
learning experience. No other certification program would have given me that.

So, yes, all you other CELTA folks out
there, I did get a Pass A (provisionally, but I have every reason to believe
that that will be my final grade as well). After five years of experience and
knowing from feedback, the clients I was given and their subsequent renewals
that I was good – if not great – at my job, I’m happy to see that my grade
reflects that (although I would have been fine with a B – that was the grade I
was prepared to receive). For those who don’t know, about 70% of everyone who
takes the CELTA gets a regular “Pass”. 25-27% get a Pass B and 3-5% get a Pass
A.

There are a lot of personal experiences
scattered about the Interwebs on taking the CELTA, especially the gruelling
four-week course. At least one good post on the topic covers the writer’sexperience getting a Pass B, with tips on how readers can attempt the same.
There are none chronicling the experience of someone who got a Pass A, which is
why I’m writing this at all.

I can’t tell you “how” to get a Pass A,
because even having got one, I don’t really know how it’s done. The criteria
for the various grades are never clearly outlined – there is no (known) formula
that says “if you get this many Above Standards on your lessons” or something,
that automatically translates into a Pass A or B”. *

What I can say is that it was
extraordinarily difficult, despite having come in with a lot of experience.
I’ll be honest: I found the input sessions mostly easy (although I did learn a
few things and pick up lots of ideas and techniques, broadening my repertoire),
the written assignments not difficult in their content but certainly difficult
in terms of the time and attention to detail it took to turn in something truly
great. I did find the actual teaching to be a challenge – partly because my own
style was a bit higher on the Teacher Talking Time that CELTA so rails against,
and partly because being assessed and critiqued in great detail on a relatively
short lesson that comes between two other lessons that other trainees planned
is quite different indeed from how I teach at my actual job.

Basically, even with experience I had to
work extraordinarily hard to hand in work and perform at a level that
eventually earned me the A, and I don’t see how I could have done it without
prior experience. I’d attend class all day, come home and work for up to four
hours straight. In every other aspect of life I reverted to someone who has the
mentality of a five-year-old because I was just so mentally shot to hell from
how hard I was working. I ate kids’ food and drank a lot of whiskey. I worked
all weekend almost every weekend (on the final weekend I managed to take Sunday
off). I obsessed over lesson plans and nearly get headaches just thinking aout
the level of detail I included in my Procedure pages. I stopped blogging, I stopped
reading, I stopped watching TV and didn’t even check e-mail all that often – I
did keep Facebook open in the background at all times though.

I highly doubt that someone on the CELTA
course with zero teaching experience could get a Pass A unless they were
preternaturally talented or had some indirect experience (ie one of their
parents was a teacher or some such – that kind of exposure does have value). A
Pass B would be possible, but a person with no experience who managed that
would still have to be exceptionally talented.

I did note a few things that might have
helped bump me from a B to an A. While there’s no set number of Above Standards
that one needs in order to get an A or B, clearly the more you get, the better
your chances are. The poster in the link above got 6 out of 9 Above Standards
and got a B. I got 5 out of 8. Another trainee in my group – who was extremely
good and actually had a teaching certificate already, just not for TEFL – got 6
out of 8, but I’m not sure what his final grade was. Another girl in another
group also got 6 out of 8, but I’m not sure of her final grade, either. If more
than half of your TPs are Above Standard, you’ll probably make it into the
upper grades…or you’re far more likely, at least.

They tell you that as long as you pass all
of your written assignments, it doesn’t matter how well you do on them, because
it’s an overall Pass/Fail (and it is clearly announced that if you fail one
assignment, you can pass the course but you can’t get a Pass A). That said, my
final report noted that all of my written assignments were “of a very high
standard” and that I passed all of them with no resubmissions. The fact that
this was noted makes me believe that it had some impact on getting the A.

The tutors look in great detail at lesson
plans, and this is one area in which I excelled – I mentioned above how I would
give myself headaches over the level of detail I included. Every stage had ICQs
and CCQs mapped out. If I was going to model instructions, I noted that, and
how I would model them (with a student, with the board etc.). I was very detailed in writing out what the
students would do in each stage and I was very careful to check my Interaction
Patterns to make sure there was as little T-Ss as possible. If your Procedure
page for a 40-minute lesson reaches 3 or even 4 pages, you know you’re on the
right track.

I was careful to use any new thing from a recent input session as soon as it
was appropriate, and note that in my lesson plans, as well. In the real world
you don’t need to do this, but if you If you’re really trying to excel, listen
carefully to little things the tutors say: if you hear a tutor mention that
using “teach” and “learn” in your aims or stage aims is a bad idea (and it is –
“teach” is too teacher-centered and “learn” is too general), then don’t use
those verbs in your aims. If they say “for any language focus, create a context
and cover meaning, form and pronunciation”, well, do that. Every time. Even if
you have to write that down on a piece of scrap paper and tape it over your
computer.

Which, yes, boils down to “do what the
tutors tell you”, but hey. Oh well. They’re tutors for a reason.

Other things that I felt worked in my
favor: strong language awareness**, good rapport with students, confidence, good
instructions, ability to adapt and create materials, good anticipation of
problems, participation in input sessions and “professionalism” (be on time,
don’t look skeevy, get on well with other trainees and coordinate lesson flow
with those in your group, show leadership skills), and strong self-reflection
and reaction to feedback.

Of course, a lot of this is easier said
than done. I can say “oh you should cultivate a strong rapport with students” –
yeah, great, but how do you do that? I can’t tell you. I know what works for
me, but everyone’s style is different. This is why teaching is a lot harder
than people give it credit for (and the profession has a surprisingly high
number of detractors). There are no easy answers to things like “how to improve
rapport” – it’s very touchy-feely. There are fewer clear answers in education
than in other professions.

No guarantees or promises that doing all of
this will get you an A, or even a B (like I said, I can’t tell you how to do
that), but these are things tutors noted as my strengths, and a few of them
were things that tutors openly said were important – for example, one tutor
said quite clearly that a Pass A trainee “shows a high degree of
professionalism, which includes being on time” (there were some late students).

It’s also quite clearly possible to get a
Pass A while still having areas requiring improvement – even serious ones. I
personally need to reduce my Teacher Talking Time. It’s hard for me to do,
because I’m a naturally chatty person and I do have a strong personality. I
like to really get to know my students, and I like for them to really get to
know me, which often translates into my being more talkative and more at the
front of the class than I really should be. If you know you have a similarly
serious action point, but have shown clearly that you are taking steps to
improve, are aware of the problem and are open to feedback on it, then it is
still possible to finish the course while still needing to work on the issue,
and get an A nonetheless.

I could also stand to work on my timing, and my lead-ins tend to take too long.
I tend to latch on to a few great ideas and over-use them, for example doing
similar lead-ins for each class (not on any report, I just know that I do
that). When I get nervous, my eye contact shoots to hell and at least in the
beginning my board work was a mess (much improved, still not perfect).

Basically, I’m far from a perfect teacher.
I’m good, and I’m not shy about the fact that I’m good – I am so totally not
into the paradigm where women and people in professions dominated by women are
shot down if they are anything less than humble, if not self-deprecating, and
goodness forbid you be confident or (gasp) self-promoting. I’m not perfect,
though, and I could be a hell of a lot better. If someone like me who still has
a lot to work on can get an A, clearly it is a goal that need not be dismissed
as impossible (although if you have no experience at all, you are probably
better off shooting for a B).

So, what real advice can I give? Not much,
except this: if you set up your goal as “I’m gonna gits me an A!” then, well,
it’s a worthy goal and all, but you’ll probably give yourself an ulcer, and
stress so much about whether you’re doing enough or doing well enough that your
freaky-outy stress will cause you to lose focus and actually do worse. Don’t
look for a magic bullet or secret formula – there is none, and trying to guess
at the magical combination of factors that leads to an A will just cause you to
get even more freaky-outy. Always remember that it’s not a competition, so if
you see someone who seems to be doing better than you, hey, you’re in it for
four weeks with that person and you are quite possibly friendly with them – you
are not in a race. There is not just one gold medal. Their good work does not
mean you’ll get edged out for the one top spot, because there is no “one” top
spot.

It sounds like a cliché but it’s really
true: just work your ass off, do the best work you can do and don’t freak out
(because that will affect your work). Remember
that the course is designed for people with no experience. Things you can do
immediately, that take no innate or learned skill are to participate as much as
you can in input, do your damnedest to provide as much detail as you can in
your lesson plans, be on time and be receptive to feedback (defend yourself if
you feel something said was really unfair, or explain your rationale, but don’t
get defensive or argumentative). If you
are given a language focus to teach, learn everything you can about it
(especially if it’s grammar), beyond what the textbook says. Even if you don’t
plan to teach every aspect, know everything you can to better cope with
questions or issues that may arise.

*One tutor said something along the lines of "We know we're not turning out perfect teachers, that's impossible in four weeks. After the CELTA you'll still need training. A Pass A tells employers that you can start teaching immediately with basically no training and little support. A Pass B tells them that you will need a lot less training than most new hires, but still require some. A Pass tells them that you are an average passing trainee, will need further training and support, but you did absorb the fundamentals taught on the CELTA."

**About that language awareness thing –
yeah. It’s tough, even with experience and especially with no experience. Don’t
be afraid – when I started teaching, I was all “modal? WTF is a modal?” – which
of course meant that I was not the best teacher. I learned, though, and I got
better. I picked up my language awareness because I had to teach it. Actually
teaching it did far more for my own in-depth language awareness than reading a
grammar book ever could have done. If you find yourself, the night before a
lesson, flipping through web pages or reference books going “WTF is a modal?”,
don’t worry, you’re not the only one, and the next time you have to teach it,
you’ll know it. You’ll get better. You’ll learn it in far more depth and detail
than you ever thought possible because having to teach it does that – it forces
you to learn it in a somewhat high-pressure situation. So go out and buy
yourself a good grammar reference, pour yourself a drink and relax.

Friday, October 14, 2011

A well-known essay on Why Chinese is So Damn Hard recently reappeared online. I remember reading it back when it first
appeared, agreeing heartily with the main points it makes – yes, the writing system is too complex and
not very phonetic! Yes, classical Chinese is freakin’ impossible! Yes, the
tones are irritating!

I still agree with much of it – forget
Classical Chinese unless you’re doing it out of sheer love of the language or
studying it in a scholarly fashion. The writing system is ridiculous, not very phonetic and not even easy for native
speakers. I will go so far as to say that the writing system is one of the
hardest, if not the hardest, in the world.
Basically, I agree with everything the writer says about written Chinese
with one exception: the piece makes it sound like reading Chinese is as hard as
writing it – it’s extraordinarily difficult, true, but not quite as Sisyphean
as learning to write. I can recognize far more characters than I can write –
which makes reading approximately one order of magnitude easier than writing.

It’s spoken Chinese where I disagree with
what the writer is saying.

I don’t think the tones are as
insurmountable – they’re tough, they’re hard to remember, they’re arbitrary and
I agree that they go against how you’d normally stress words in the native
languages of many learners of Chinese, but there are only four of them and
these are challenges that a little hard work – no harder than figuring out how
to utter a decent “r” sound in French or sentence stress in Korean – can’t
overcome. While I agree that wrong tones can at times create nonsense or
misunderstood sentences, this isn’t as big a problem as the writer makes it out
to be: generally speaking even with a few misplaced or wrong tones, a listener
can get your meaning by context. With a little practice you can stress
important words in a sentence and still use their correct tone.

I also feel that the writer is not quite
correct about Romanization systems – they don’t all suck. Tongyong sucks, and
Wade-Giles sucks, and that random other one I sometimes see in Taiwan that
isn’t Tongyong sucks, but I think Pinyin is fine. I have friends who disagree,
and that’s their prerogative, but I find spelling in Pinyin to be much more
regular than spelling in English, the words as they are written, when
pronounced according to the rules of Pinyin do sound like what the word
actually is – unlike with other systems - and once you master its few challenges it
is a straightforward system to use (those issues are “x” vs. “sh”, the use of
“i” which changes its sound depending on what consonant it follows,
pronunciation of “c” and “q”, and “q” vs. “ch”. The umlauted “u” can be tough,
too). These are challenges but unlike English spelling, predictable in every
word. The rules of how to pronounce things written in Pinyin doesn’t change – I
daresay if you can’t master it after a bit of practice, that you aren’t trying.
It’s just not that hard.

In Chinese’s favor, word order is not
terribly rigid (there are rules, and then exceptions like the 把 construction, and
ways to change around word order by using passive voice and a mock passive, and
you can get your meaning across even if you change the order in many cases),
the grammar is fairly straightforward with a few exceptions – 把 and the group of verbs that use (v)起來 being
two personal bugbears of mine – and far more streamlined than anything in the
Indo-European tree, not to mention Japanese or Korean. Compound words are
formed fairly regularly and without all the weird prefix/affix/suffix squeezing
and spelling changes of English, and using words that as a composite create the
meaning you’re after when a needed piece of lexis escapes you is something you
can do fairly easily, and get your point across.

I would say the main difficulty in speaking
Chinese are all of the homonyms – unless you have a strong sense of context it
can be fairly easy to misunderstand someone who used a word that sounds just
like another word, especially if they’re speaking quickly, in a dialect or very
colloquially.

All in all though, it’s absolutely true
that learning to write Chinese is horrifically difficult, so much so that
Chinese will never be an international language, at least not a written one
because non-native learners, especially adults, will simply not be able to
master it in great numbers. Imagine a busy businessperson deciding to pick up
written Chinese for work and take classes in his/her slivers of spare time –
how far will they get? Not far at all. It just won’t happen.

It’s spoken Chinese where I think the
writer is downright wrong. It’s no harder – and in many ways easier – than
learning to speak many other languages.

Which forces me to add: it seems like the
writer is committing the same mistake that so many have: associating Chinese
mainly with the written form, and not focusing nearly enough on the spoken language.
Written Chinese is not the entirety of the Chinese language, and I wish people
would stop acting as though writing Chinese was the end-all and be-all of Chinese.

If you get adequate practice, immerse
yourself if possible and try to do a good job of learning to speak Chinese the
way you would learn any language, you can learn to speak it, assuming you
aren’t one of those folks with no aptitude for languages (in which case any
other language would be equally hard).

So why do foreigners struggle so much with Chinese? Why do relatively fewer
foreigners who begin learning Chinese get very far? Why is it such a problem if
speaking Chinese is no harder than other languages, and in many ways easier?

Because teaching methodologies for Chinese
SUCK. They S-U-C-K suck. They are aeons
behind the latest ideas in teaching for EFL and the various popular Romance
languages as well as German. I don’t know where Chinese teachers train to
become “teachers” but I don’t have much respect for the pedagogy they’ve
learned. I’ve written about it already here and here so I won’t repeat myself
too much, but I will give examples:

To learn a language effectively, you need:

- = Many and varied opportunities
to practice: this means the receptive skills (listening, reading) in both
extensive and intensive ways (ie generally/for pleasure or for
comprehension/detail as one would do in class, the productive skills (speaking
and writing – both for fluency and accuracy in terms of speaking, and free as
well as guided for writing) – I felt, in Chinese class, that I was afforded few
chances to practice and they certainly weren’t varied or targeted

-- Varying interaction patterns
with a focus on letting students do as much as possible, with as little
teacher-led time as possible – my Chinese classes were so teacher-centered that
it was amazing we spoke at all other than to read from the textbook

-- Practice in different types of
activities (there’s a world of difference between a discussion question and a
‘make a sentence’ or ‘guess the word’ game, as between writing a restaurant
review and creating a poster) - yeah,
none of this. “Write ten sentences for homework using these words” and the
occasional throwaway question was the closest we ever got to that.

-- A strong knowledge of how
students best practice (example: asking students to read out loud, especially
in turn, is one of the worst ways to handle reading) – we read every single
reading out loud, and honestly, I didn’t understand most of them. Not because I
couldn’t understand them, but the medium of practicing them made it hard to
follow

-- Opportunities to create
original speech – yeah, very little of that and when it did happen, it was
mostly written and assigned as homework

-- Some testing, but not allowing
testing to take over the main thrust of the course – we had dictation quizzes
daily, tests after every unit and a test every three units. FAR too much
testing. Of course there was a section in the feedback form that allowed you to say there was too little testing, but no bubble you could tick to say there was too much, and no room to write it yourself.

-- Tailoring grammar and time
spent on it to how important/useful the grammar is, and trying to present it in
ways that show students how to use it in the real world – not at all. All
grammar was taught with equal weight in the same ineffective “do this exercise,
there now you know the grammar” way.

-- Opportunities to practice, at
great length, the grammar taught in various “situations” or activities –
basically none of that, maybe a workbook exercise or two

-- Knowing how much vocabulary an
average student can absorb in a given class time – the teachers would cram as
much unit vocabulary into us as they could in any given class, and yes, I had
trouble remembering it all because it came too fast, without enough practice,
in a very dry form, not contextualized enough and without enough good examples of
natural usage. We went around and read it in turns, which encouraged people to basically not pay attention and was not a good way to keep students engaged or interested. It certainly did not facilitate actually remembering the vocabulary.

…and a hell of a lot more.

I mention these because these are all of the things that I observed, in my time
at Shi-da, that the MTC does not do, and they’re supposed to be one of the
better institutions. Chinese teachers ‘round the world still seem to think that
having students go around and read vocabulary examples with sentences in turn,
with no opportunities to actually create sentences, and then quickly going
through a few grammar exercises and rounding it up nicely with quizzes and
tests is a fine way for students to learn Chinese…but it’s not working. It
doesn’t work. It can’t work. And yet that’s how Chinese is taught in so many
places.

Oh yes, and I’ve said in
previous posts that Chinese language programs lean far too heavily on Chinese
for textbook/academic purposes and not for daily use, and that they seem to
care far more about perfect writing than fluent speaking – both of which are
fine for those learning Chinese for academia, but an utter mess for someone who
just wants to speak Chinese already. And those who are learning it for academia?
Either they are quite erudite but sound like a textbook (sorry J – but you’ve
improved a lot in that area!) or they just don’t speak it well at all (as with
a few people I’ve met, and heard stories about, as in ‘how did she get into the
graduate program when she can barely string together a sentence in Chinese?’).

THIS is why foreigners aren’t doing a good job of learning Chinese – not because
spoken Chinese is all that inherently difficult.

Get some good Chinese
teachers to really make changes in how the language is taught, and get classes
with real practice on all levels of the language, and you’ll see a massive
uptick in foreigners’ ability to master the language: the spoken language, at
least. The problem isn't the language - it is 100% the piss-poor methodology. There's no excuse for it.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

I'm currently with Brendan, visiting my in-laws outside Bangor, Maine. Today we walked - I can't rightly say we hiked - several miles of scenic forest trails and an elevated "bog boardwalk".

I grew up in upstate New York, not quite England but culturally not that dissimilar. I am quite obviously very familiar with the concept of changing leaves in autumn. I grew up with Autumns in which the leaves turned every amazing shade of red, orange, yellow, gold, lime, burgundy and brown. I never thought of them as anything special, or anything worth running out with a camera to capture on film - they were just a part of everyday life.

Taiwan does not have leaves that change in autumn, although I guess some parts of the country, up in the mountains, might have it to an extent (I once saw a color-changed tree on Yangmingshan, woohoo!). I haven't been home when the leaves change in years: we usually come home in late summer or late winter and miss it. It's therefore been something like half a decade since I've seen leaves changing color.

Far from being jaded about it, it was like I was a kid, or a tourist from a tropical country - the excitement over the beauty of seeing such vibrant colors in nature, splashed on trees and mottled with bright hues out to the horizon was something I hadn't experienced since early childhood. Like the beauty of the Hudson Valley, it just gets lost on you if you're exposed to it for too long.

I find that interesting - something I hadn't even been able to take for granted because I didn't notice it long enough to dismiss it, like the beauty of autumn leaves, became something new, exciting and to an extent sentimental simply because I hadn't seen it in so long. Now I can appreciate it. In 2006 I didn't even notice, let alone care.

By the way, there are black bears in the woods where we were hiking. Chances of seeing one are basically nil, but I did comment that if we did encounter one and get mauled, the local headlines would read "Former Maine Resident and his Non-Maine Wife Killed in Vicious Bear Attack".

Earlier in our visit we went to downtown Bangor. I've said before that while I don't wish to live in a small town or a cold climate, that I happen to like Bangor and if I changed my mind about both of the above, it would be a lovely place to live (for now I'm content for it to be a lovely place to visit). Not so for my own hometown, which was flooded during Hurricane Irene, to which I snarkily replied that I wish the whole thing had washed away.

I like Bangor for its pre-war architecture (lovin' that understated Art Nouveau type on the McGuire Building) and revived downtown, and compare both it and nearby Orono quite favorably to Highland, NY (where I grew up). Downtown Bangor has a few shops - some hippie-dippy, some cute, some fashionable - a neat bookstore, an awesome antique shop, more than its fair share of pubs and drinking establishments, a Japanese restaurant, two South Asian restaurants and a Thai place, among other things. There's not enough to keep me occupied long-term but there is quite enough for a longer visit.

Basically, I'm not down on all small towns. Just the one I grew up in! (I was one of the few liberals in a town of conservatives, a non-Catholic in a town full of Catholics - or for that matter a secular person in a religious town - and a Polish-Armenian who hated soccer in a town full of athletic Italians).

Over the course of our friendship and relationship, I've exposed Brendan to my cultural heritage, mostly by culinary means. I am still sorely disappointed that he doesn't like olives, even the expensive kind (which are cheap in Turkey). I've made sure he's tried lahmacun, tabbouleh, good kielbasa, fish cookies, hummus, various olives, done the whole "forage for a plate of cheese, bread, olives and other tasty things for a meal", introduced him to ketchup on eggs (a family staple - he didn't take to it) and recently made him latkes with sour cream and applesauce, which may not be my culture (I'm not Jewish), but it is something that reminds me of growing up in New York - even if it was the state, not the city.

So it was finally time for Brendan to introduce me to the food of his cultural heritage...

So we drove out...

...stopped at a convenience store...

...and bought...

...

...whoopie pies.

At one point before we bought them, I saw them for sale and asked Brendan about them. Another guy at the counter said "you're not from Maine, are you?"

No, no I'm not.

I also made sure we went here:

Which may be a Canadian thing, but there is one in Maine and Brendan was born in Canada so there ya go.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

There have been a few posts coming out about Taiwan that, while I wouldn't say I entirely disagree with them, I feel they present foreigner-Taiwanese relations in a light that is not entirely correct or fully realized, or skewed in some way.

1.) Someone should really address the fact that many Taiwanese see foreign labor in working class jobs - the 外勞- very differently from how they see Westerners or Asians from developed countries. The former tend to be Indonesians, Thai, Vietnamese and Filipino (and some throw Chinese foreign brides into that category). The latter tend to be office workers, engineers, English teachers and other expats in better positions. Nobody calls them 外勞, often they get the more complimentary 外國朋友.

To this end, a friend of mine has mentioned something he once saw from a bus window: a protest against foreigners. I'm not sure if the signs said "Foreigners Go Home" or "Foreign Labor Go Home" - a big difference when rendered in Chinese, but it was pretty clearly aimed at foreign labor. They weren't telling the English teachers to hoof it back to Canada. It's racist and wrong, I know, but that's the attitude.

This isn't fair or right, and certainly not every Taiwanese person feels this way, but it is something that is sadly common. The foreigner stabbed in the case above was an Indonesian worker. I'm certainly not saying that this makes it less serious - far from that. It's just as wrong no matter who the victim is. My point is that this post makes it sound like roving gangs of angry Taiwanese youth are happily stabbing English teachers and foreign office workers in the street. They're not. Heck, they're not out stabbing foreign laborers, either - this is an isolated incident and not an indicator of widespread violence (although violence against foreign labor is a bigger problem than violence against Western/non-working-class expats).

2.) As above, this was an isolated incident. There are simply not wand'ring gangs of disaffected youth waiting to stab us in the streets. Michael Turton's link to this post made it sound like there are groups of angry Taiwanese gathering like the KKK to take out foreigners. Simply not true. No country is 100% safe and Taiwan has its share of crime problems (mostly mob-related, some two-people-in-a-feud or family related, some just random acts of violence), but Taiwan is relatively safe. You're almost certainly not going to get stabbed in the street for being a foreigner.

3.) I don't care for the first part of Ozsoapbox's post:

You’re treated differently (usually positively) simply because you don’t look Taiwanese, people stare, they’re perhaps more careful about what they say and of course there’s always the familiar ‘OMG WAIGOREN WAIGOREN!’ calls you hear randomly.
Calls to which the equivalent in the west would be going up to an Asian looking person, pointing and shouting ‘OMG ASIAN ASIAN!’

The first sentence is true - you are treated differently often positively, because you're a foreigner, but that's true around the world. It's not unique to Taiwan. It even happens in New York.

I haven't found that people are more careful about what they say - if anything I feel people say more outrageous things to me because I'm not Taiwanese, so people who hold their tongues among Taiwanese for fear of social exclusion will tell me their uncensored opinions because I'm different and can't exclude them in that way, or I might be more accepting. Sometimes these opinions are refreshingly honest and insightful. Sometimes they're downright racist or ignorant. Like people everywhere.

But mostly, it's simply not true that shouting "Waiguoren!" at a foreigner is the same as a foreigner shouting "Asian!" at an Asian person. Neither is a good idea, and I don't condone either, but c'mon. Our home countries are generally speaking far more diverse than Taiwan. "Asians" are not an anomaly or unique, at least not where I'm from. They don't stand out. Many people of Asian heritage were born and raised where I was from, meaning they're just as American as I am. It's very different to go up to an Asian in, say, Washington DC and shout "OMG ASIAN!" than to go up to a foreigner in Taipei and do the same thing. I'm not saying it's a good idea (I refuse to go down the "different culture, they don't know better" route because I don't believe it's true), just that it's not the same thing. We really do stand out. We are a relatively rare sight. It's human nature worldwide to notice things like that. I'd love to see a world in which nobody commented on it, but for now we're stuck with what we have.

Anyway, really, for those of us in Taipei - how often do you get the "WAIGUOREN!" treatment? Maybe from very small children who don't know better (true of children the world over - American kids say similarly embarrassing things) but from everyone else, including older children, does this happen at all in places with high concentrations of foreigners? I don't know where Ozsoapbox lives, but I have observed that once you get to an area where foreigners are not unique, not an anomaly and don't stand out, people stop commenting. Why? We're all still foreigners. We're still not Taiwanese. We still look different - it's because there are enough of us, like Asians in most American cities, that we don't stand out. And poof, the problem disappears, because it wasn't a problem of racism to begin with.

There's also this post - and I'm commenting on it as a foreigner who doesn't feel connected to the foreign community. I'm not saying I'm "Taiwanese" or that I don't have expat friends, but there is a community of expats that I don't really feel I relate to or connect to.

Sure, one of the two people mentioned in the altercation was a foreigner, but I see nothing in the news item that indicates that the Taiwanese treat all foreigners as the same or as a cohesive "other". The same altercation could have taken place between two Taiwanese people and been largely the same, albeit without "illegal work status" issues (though "moonlighting as a stripper" would have been mentioned) or the word "foreigner" used. Otherwise, all I see is an indication that there was an altercation and one of the two happened to be a foreigner. Not any sign that all Taiwanese think of all foreigners in a certain way and treat them as such.

The same goes for the full article - I don't think many Taiwanese would think that moonlighting as a stripper is "appropriate behavior" for another Taiwanese, either (but that has more to do with conservative values). As for the guy in question, the law is the law. Just because there's a law that a foreign worker can only do for a living what his/her work permit states doesn't indicate that Taiwanese all think of us as One Big Group of Other. I also get the strong feeling that the government is more concerned with foreigners moonlighting in dodgy industries (such as stripping) or downright illegal ones. If you work as an English teacher and freelance teaching private classes, editing, doing IT work or whatever else, well, that's technically illegal but not something to worry too much about. Those aren't dodgy situations that are likely to get you deported.

The article itself is kind of ridiculous, though. "Foreign workers to be targeted"? Um, so they're going to hunt us down in the streets and corral us into deportation cells? Hardly. Why the alarmist headline? "Good samaritan"? Say WHAT? Does that even make sense?

I won't be there - I'll be somewhere in Massachussetts between my parents' house and my in-laws', but I wish I could be there.

On the bright side, I'll be in New York twice next week and hope to get the chance to stop by Wall Street, stand around and shout socialist slogans, because I really do believe in what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do - even if the media doesn't seem to understand it.

It's no secret that I teach in a lot of financial institutions - the whole gamut of that industry, not just banks. A lot of my students and some of my friends work in Xinyi near where Occupy Taipei will take place, and work for the institutions that the protesters are decrying as aiding the "1%" and taking money from us 99%. I justify this by reminding myself that the economic structure of Taiwan is not the same as that of the USA. Pay disparities between the normal and the very rich aren't as pronounced. It's not as wealthy a country in absolute terms (even if it has a PPP higher than that of Japan, meaning that the average Taiwanese enjoys a higher standard of living than a similarly positioned Japanese person). Americans are being crushed by student debt - an issue most Taiwanese don't face: rare is the Taiwanese student who pays his or her own way at a private institution, and the public universities, widely acknowledged to provide a better education, are affordable. Americans are being crushed by housing debt: while the real estate market in Taipei City is facing some major problems and massive price inflation, the issue is more that new buyers and families needing to expand can't afford to live in Taipei City - it's not people who bought McMansions and can't meet their mortgages (or regular folks who bought modest houses and still can't afford them due to layoffs or structural problems in the economy). I don't see Taiwanese crushed by medical debt or health care they can't afford: the excellent NHI system takes care of that for the most part.

The issues I see in Taiwan are different: new graduates and entry-level workers are ridiculously underpaid. I'm sorry, but in Taipei especially, for the hours they put in, $25,000-$30,000 NT a month is simply not acceptable. I wouldn't work so hard for such little pay, and I wish there would be a grassroots change, spearheaded by the young, who refuse to work so much for so little. I see new graduates who can't get a job (which, come to think of it, is just like the USA) because their qualifications are nothing special. I see management that honestly and truly does not care about employee well-being and work-life balance, no matter the age, seniority or level of the employee. I see them willing to let valuable employees go rather than pay them fairly or ask them to work reasonable hours (the worst of this is in the accounting industry - don't even ask the hours that an auditor, especially one in their first two years of work, has to put in. It's criminal.)

I see a country where people use tradition as a reason why young people live with parents well into their twenties or even thirties, while everyone ignores the truth: this generation doesn't live at home entirely because they want to (although some surely want to), or because their parents won't hear of them living on their own if they're unmarried (although some parents surely do insist on this, and some children do capitulate). They live with their parents because they have to: they don't get paid enough to get their own accommodation.

I see a country where there is still workplace gender discrimination - although it's much better than the rest of Asia and continuing to improve - and couples are choosing not to have children because a.) they can't afford it or b.) the wife doesn't want to be the one pressured to give up her career or take on more than she can handle. I see a system where childcare, if you don't have parents close by who can watch your child, is just as unaffordable as in the USA.

That is why I'd have liked to join Occupy Taipei (with apologies, but also no shame, to my friends in finance). That's why I regret that I won't be in Taipei for it. That's why I hope it takes hold and is still going on when I come back. I may work with many businesses, but that doesn't mean I don't see the problems therein.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Today may be the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China, but I'm not celebrating (I'm not even in Taiwan, to be honest). It's not the 100th anniversary of Taiwan, the Republic of Taiwan or even an independent and recognized ROC.

So our course is finally (finally!) done and I'll have more time for blogging from now on. I have a lot to say about Turkey but I might wait a few days until we're in Maine and have some time to relax to write up my thoughts on our time there. I still feel more attached to Taipei, but a month in Istanbul with an honest-to-goodness apartment, social life (everyone on our course got along extremely well - the chemistry was just phenomenal and we went out for lunches and every weekend), routine, dinners at home and neighbors who recognized us...well, that made me feel like a part of me has experienced Istanbul expat life, too.

I really adored it - Istanbul is an awesome city. Gorgeous and varied architecture, from Byzantine churches to grand mosques to 18th and 19th century European grandeur to touches of Oriental Express Art Nouveau to pre-war rowhouses to modern concoctions. Phenomenal food is everywhere, as well as fantastic shopping. Hills which are hell to climb but afford dazzling views. Friendly people, lots of street cats that are clean and well-fed (but not owned by anybody). All that is topped off with a nightlife that puts both DC and Taipei to shame - it's on par with New York but in some ways better - there is an entire neighborhood (Beyoglu around Istiklal Caddesi) on the Golden Horn that goes nuclear at sundown, with seemingly infinite choices for bars, dancing, cafes and food. Not even New York has something like that (although some places light up more than others). Let's just say that we partook generously of it - which is a lot more fun when there are ten of you and everyone needs to blow off some stress. I would totally stay - even live - in Istanbul again.

Now we're "home" - or at least on our way. Yesterday afternoon we landed at JFK and met my parents, spending the night before heading back to the airport (where we are now) to visit B's parents in Maine.

Being home, even for just an overnight - we return to my parents' next week - has made me think about who I am in Taipei, who I was in Istanbul and who I am in the USA. The Jenna who ate her mom's eggs, bacon and blueberry muffins this morning and helped putter around the kitchen she knows so well, who cuddled the two cats and took a lovely post-flight bath in the huge upstairs bathtub is basically an adult - and much more mature - version of the Jenna who last lived in that house in high school. The Jenna who lives in Taipei sometimes feels like a woman who experienced entirely different formative years than she did. You wouldn't have expected that Jenna to have grown up in a small town, and she's really nothing like the dorktacular girl that went to high school in that same town.

The first Jenna is the one who was always a little eccentric but is ticking all the right boxes as she grows older. It's the one who had a big, local, family wedding to a beloved-by-parents guy. It's the one who knows how to build a hearth fire and which apples are the best to pick, who knows a lot about LL Bean winter gear and is no stranger to chasing deer off the lawn. It's the one that would have probably made a really good school teacher or office worker and wouldn't have traveled that much outside Western Europe, and would probably own a house and car now.

The second one is more than a little eccentric without actually being insane. She's the one who had a big but non-traditional wedding in a crazy fuchsia dress to an awesome, adventuresome guy who also travels the world. It's the one who knows her way around an urban jungle and can tell you where to find the best siphon coffee bar, who knows how to bargain in a foreign bazaar and is no stranger to the realities of city life or how things (generally) work in foreign countries. It's the one who will never work in a public school (teachers deserve more support and higher salaries than what they earn in that system - and I deserve better, as well) and couldn't stand office life. It's the one who regularly gives her parents heart palpitations with her travel choices...and may never own a house or car (although an urban or semi-urban townhouse someday is not out of the question).

The first one is familiar with the way the light hits the Hudson River in the morning and lives near New York City without actually visiting it often. The second can tell you what it smells like as you bike along the trail from Jingmei to Zheng-da and stops in New York whenever she can. The first speaks French. The second forgot most of her French and speaks Chinese.

It's hard to explain, and harder still to draw a clear line, but it's there - Taipei Jenna isn't quite the same as Hometown Jenna. Neither were the same as DC Jenna - that one dated a few inappropriate guys, had a lot of friends but not a raging social life, worked in a cubicle and had a lot of growing up to do, and went out on the weekends to nightspots she didn't even like all that much. And of course there was Guizhou Jenna and India Jenna, and more recently, Istanbul Jenna.

They're all different women, and that's not just the result of growth and the passing of time. Their different facets come out not just as I grow, but as I live in different places. When I come home, the old me comes out a little more (ever heard the old story about how when you're around your parents, you revert to a lot of your childhood behaviors and ways of dealing with them despite the fact that you're all adults?), and the me who lives in Taipei recedes a bit.

Everyone is influenced by where they are and the places where they live or visit - not even necessarily for a long time. A week in Bangladesh could very well blow the mind of a lot of people I know (it certainly blew mine). I do think that expat life magnifies and deepens that. When you live in another country, especially one with a wildly different set of cultural norms, you absorb more of that place and change as a result. I have felt for years that my study abroad time in India is what knocked the Hometown Jenna's pinball down a wildly different course. She's the reason why Guizhou Jenna and Taipei Jenna got the chance to exist. Taipei Jenna made Istanbul Jenna possible. This is hardly a Nobel-worthy insight, but it's one I'm writing about now because my visit home made me more aware of it.

I quite liked Istanbul Jenna, though. She was a hard worker with a lot of friends who knew how to party. I hope she sticks around for a bit in Taipei!

Look Me Over!

Who is this crazyperson?

I'm an American woman living and working in Taipei, Taiwan. I work in corporate training, travel frequently, drink far too much coffee and alcohol (often together). I love reading, photography and exploring any city I find myself in. I have a lovely husband, Brendan and a fat, insane cat named Zhao Cai. I write quite a bit about being a female expat and women's issues in Asia, as well as travel, hiking, photography and food - with a few personal anecdotes thrown in.